Brian Fanzo launches live show to 10,000 people

Intro

Facebook Live and Pericope are great tools to share live stories, but many marketers are still sitting on the fence waiting for a clear path to building an audience through live streaming. Sure, you can connect to your brands’ followers, but how do you actually turn them into marketable leads and pipeline opportunities? And how do get your live stream in front of new followers?

“The old way of thinking was wait until they go to my website and convert them there, but the younger generation isn’t going to a specific website for branded content,” said Brian Fanzo, live streaming evangelist, thought leader and podcaster. “Now, we have to bring content to them.”

Fanzo, who has 16,000 Periscope followers and 2,000 on Facebook, is adamant that brands and creators shouldn’t worry about picking the right live streaming platform. That’s the wrong question. Instead, Fanzo encourages marketers to focus on their audience and stream their live content onto as many platforms as possible at the same time through platforms like Wirecast. Fanzo discusses his tech stack in the first episode ofFOMO Fanz, his new weekly live show for fans. Here’s theblog post about his initial results.

Objective & Challenge

Fanzo’s goal for the new shows was to attract a new audience who are not already his followers. Fanzo needed to expand his reach beyond the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter to attract a new audience interested in what he has to say but who are also unaware that he’s out there.

“It’s not about being everywhere, it’s about focusing on where your customers are today & listening for where your community will be tomorrow,” he said.

Facebook Live and Periscope only show your live streams to people who already follow you, making it effective for engaging people who already know you but limiting its potential to grow new audiences. While both platforms allow creators to promote recorded or static content, neither allow paid promotion of live streams. Fanzo brought both of these challenges to the AmpLive team in anticipation of the launch of 2 new live shows.

Solution

Fanzo is adamant that live streaming isn’t about bringing audiences to you, but reaching out to them where they already spend time online. Fanzo launched his new show show simultaneously onFacebook Live,Periscope, andStream.live embedded on his own site,iSocialFanz. To attract net new audiences, Fanzo also distributed the show through AmpLive across the wider internet.

Results

Fanzo’s first broadcast beat all his expectations, attracting more than 15,000 viewers. Facebook Live brought in 1,900 viewers, Periscope tallied 3,000 viewers, and the AmpLive network delivered another 10,800 viewers. Put another way, AmpLive drove 5x more viewers than Facebook and 3x more viewers than Periscope, and double the combined number of his audience of followers. For Fanzo, these results show the power of distributing content outside the walls of Facebook and Periscope.

“I like going toward where audience is rather than make people come to me,” he said. “Before I was only relying on the community I had already built, but now I’m building a larger audience where my audience is and they might be.”

Here’s how Fanzo’s broadcast looked on the 3 platforms he streamed into: Stream.live, Facebook and Periscope. Note, at the moment in time when these images were captured, there were 1,011 viewers watching via Stream.live, while Facebook had 42 viewers and Periscope had 75. Fanzo insists that live streamers should maximize their audience by distributing the content to as many audiences as possible.

Conclusion

Most companies and organizations already have a following on Facebook Live, Periscope and other streaming platforms. By all means invite them to your next live broadcast, but growing an audience beyond people you already know is a top priority for 2017. In order for live streaming to gain further adoption by marketers, there must be a clear path to lead generation. Combining live streaming with distribution and retargeting are the keys to making that happen.

“Building an audience and using retargeting, I think those are the things traditional marketers are used to hearing, I just don’t think they understand the full power of it when applied to live streaming,” he said.